the anger pulses thick,
hot, eager yet sluggish
in my jagged veins which
touch the air at erratic intervals,
spitting crimson beads that
conglomerate then fall
like tears of a sacrifice.
my eyes focus, unfocus
unable to fixate through the red haze
snaking across my vision,
and the barbed thoughts,
picking inside my brain then
bleeding out through trembling lips;
venom and hatred
ripped from my tongue
to form an acrimonious cloud
of vituperation that i assure will
lacerate your vile fragility.
i despise you.

if you were to halt me in a street and ask
what defines a mystery? i'd have no trouble
in dropping equivalents, metonyms:
a puzzle, conundrum, crux, enigma,
a commodity beyond human understanding.

but truthfully, impartially, justly
when i muse over the question alone
the webs of instinctual response can be brushed aside
replaced with an inherent yearning.

i seek to know why perfection spawned
so intangible in an age where, like the
illegible scrawl of a faceless war leader,
each detail is immortalised
in a pixel, a photon, a sound wave.

you and i, we're not acquainted in the flesh
but the mystery continues, of how a translation
of your features on a screen can captivate me,
can steal into my heart and run away with my breath.

i would swear of your existence on the stars,
take a cosmic oath.
but how am i to know, with you there and me here?
prove yourself to me, please
to be more than an empyrean deception

When I was young I stood
Cautiously at the edge
Clutching my mother's hand, squealing
As the waves lapped at my ankles
And pulled away
When I tried to touch them.

As I aged, I grew brave
Wading into the waves, knee-deep
Chasing them up the shore, kicking
Because they posed no threat
Existing simply
For my entertainment.

Then adolescence;
No longer was the water
Warm and pleasant to touch, instead
It swirled coldly about my waist
Tugging me one way
Then changing its mind.

Deeper I was submerged
Until my eyes were masked.
I could not reckon with direction, but rather
The struggle with the hands
Clutching me tight
And pulling me under
To join the drowned.